Chapter Three
I eventually realized the noise was coming from my phone; in my dream, it was the pulsing beat of dance-floor speakers where
I was twirling with abandon on the arm of a man who was also somehow a unicorn. It was very surreal, like a BoJack Horseman cartoon. I opened one eye and saw seven texts from Kate, the final one just a row of question marks. Still, I could not move.
Then my arm started moving for me, because Marlon was standing above me, shaking it.
“Girl, I was just about to do the sternal rub thing they do on Chicago Fire.”
“I ate two of the gummies you gave me for my birthday.”
“What? Why?”
“I got fired from A Crush for Christmas.”
Marlon inhaled. “OK, well, this is unfortunate. But Jeff will get you the gig back over the weekend. No one likes Jason. Everyone
loves you.”
I made a noise. I still couldn’t move.
“Elise, do I have to lecture you about how important this weekend is for Kate? You need to suck it up, put on a smile, and
focus on her.”
“I practically raised her, I don’t need to be reminded to focus on her.”
“Elise.”
“Why can’t I just sleep for another ten hours and drive out in the morning?”
“Centring yourself right now is a real page from the ‘Your Mom’ playbook.”
I shot up. “That is unfair.” Had I always had this many teeth in my mouth?
“I’m sorry, the pink gummies need a strong adversary.”
I grabbed the bag I’d hastily packed earlier and tried to feel my feet. I looked out my front window—the limo was waiting
downstairs, where the cruel sun was beaming brighter than a meteor and the sidewalk was peppered with school children meandering
home, all of whom appeared to be screaming at full volume. I followed Marlon down the dimly lit stairs of our building, kicking
aside discarded supermarket flyers that had been blocking the door for weeks. I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling was “alright,”
but the gummy made the memory of having been fired sit on a far shelf in the back of my brain. Marlon was right, I couldn’t
let Kate down. No one deserved a party weekend in her honour more than my little sister. The limo driver, an older man with
silver hair in a little black cap, opened one of the side doors for me, as Marlon got in another. I gave him a little curtsy
for some reason, because it felt like the right thing to do in the Amélie-style film that was playing in my head. He gave me a curious look and said his name was Rocco.
“Hello, Rocco, I’m Elise, the bride’s sister.”
“OK,” he replied, looking above my head as he spoke, “make sure no one throws up. Even one instance of throwing up equals
no deposit back.”
“Ten-four,” I said, ducking into the car, my eyes adjusting to the strange nightclub-like lighting.
Kate was on a long limo bench, wearing what I’m guessing was a “wedding romper” alongside her best friends Val and Yasmine, two femmes with asymmetrical haircuts and Daisy Duke shorts who were gathering champagne flutes on the slim middle table between the benches.
Val greeted me with a “Sister is here!” and almost toppled over the glasses leaning over to give me a hug.
I sat across from them, next to Marlon and Kris, who were fixated on a playlist. Kris was Marlon’s visual opposite, as pale as me when I forgot to take my iron pills, reddish blond hair, lanky.
Marlon is Black, tall, broad, and burly.
They were also opposite in personality—Marlon all snark, and Kris an open-hearted optimist. I loved them together.
I often thought, Why can’t I find my Kris?
“Any requests?” Marlon asked me, holding out the playlist, and then pulling it back. “Just kidding, I’m not letting you play
Sheryl Crow’s greatest hits.”
“Hey, if it makes you happy . . .”
Val’s curly soft pink hair fell softly over her right eye and smelled like sweet almonds and something spicy. I gave Yasmine
a shy wave. She was clad in a leather bustier and had curly black waves that fell to one side, a side shave on the other.
She was built like an extra from the movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! You can probably already deduce that I am much less cool than Kate and her friends generally, but I was comfortable with
that feeling. I was comfortable with most feelings at that moment. I could finally understand what my therapist was always
going on about the need to be curious about emotions, to watch them float by, rather than thinking of them as factual truths
and certainties.
The only person present I hadn’t yet encountered was Hazel, Kate’s straight friend from working as a nurse at the ER, who I knew had booked the vacation house and all the mayhem.
Hazel was the only married person of the bunch, though I was sure Marlon and Kris would be next.
This was the first time Katie’s work and real friends were meeting, and I could tell by the way she was talking that she was a bit nervous about it.
I reached my hand out for Hazel to shake, and she held it warmly.
“I’m so glad to finally meet you,” she said.
“Are you ready for some revelry?” I nodded, overwhelmed suddenly by a feeling of constriction, that the limo was set up in such a way that I couldn’t just zone out and daydream, my favourite thing to do on a long drive.
Hazel handed me my glass of champagne like she knew it would be the solution to my sudden feelings of claustrophobia and social overwhelm.
I’d hoped the gummies might make me chatty and interactive, but I felt like it had put Vaseline over the lens of my eyes and dulled my brain.
“To Kate!” she said, as we raised our glasses. Blondie’s “Rapture” came on, and it was now too loud for conversation, which
didn’t really stop anyone from trying. I was grateful for Hazel as I wouldn’t know the first thing about planning a bachelorette
weekend and it does seem like a sisterly occupation. Apparently, Hazel was a cheerleader at the college level, and she gave
off the vibe that she could teach a master class in party planning, poise, and making sure everyone around you is having a
good time. There is a certain kind of feminine social competency that I just don’t have and that I admire as much as I admire
anyone who can change a tire or catch a fish.
When Katie came out toward the end of high school, literally everyone around us looked at me and said, “Oh, I always thought Elise was the gay one,” because I preferred to dress in pants and plain, soft shirts.
I’ve since developed some style but would still love to have a uniform so I’d never have to think about it.
I used to blame my lack of gendered girl skills on my mom, a biologist who never once cooked a meal from scratch and eventually left the family when we were teenagers to go up north for a two-year research trip.
Only she never moved back in. She ended up shacking up with her research assistant, Charles.
We used to call him creepy Charles, not because he was a sex pest but because the way he spoke made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
He was the kind of person I’d feel bad for if he wasn’t taking our mom away from us.
Now she was trying to make up for it, which Kate appreciated and me less so.
Our father, an engineer, fell apart when she left.
It fell to me to kind of keep the family going for a few years.
It was a whole thing. The wedding will be the first time my parents will have seen each other since Kate’s college graduation.
Kate was resilient and optimistic by nature.
She wasn’t worried about the wedding family drama at all.
“I’m not responsible for anyone else’s behaviour,” she said to me when I brought it up.
Sarah later texted me: she’s actually really worried.
I decided not to tell Katie about getting fired.
It was her weekend. I was going to put my game face on and be a cheerleader
for love or whatever you’re supposed to do before a wedding.
Prince Edward County is an island about two and a half hours east of Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Once you’ve endured eighteen lanes of people driving their potential murder machines under the assumption that humans never die, while strip malls, high-rises, and identical suburban houses make way for even more strip malls, high-rises, and identical suburban houses, your reward for that existential chaos is one of the most beautiful places in the province.
Before our mother left, we used to take yearly summer vacations at Sandbanks Provincial Park, which contains the largest baymouth barrier dune formation in the world, with magnificent glacier-formed sand dunes that make you feel as though you’ve landed on the moon.
We camped in an old-fashioned Airstream trailer my father spent a year fixing up into a kids’ paradise of tiny bunks and cozy nooks.
A full week in August climbing the dunes and jumping in the waves, watching wild bunnies romping riverside, making s’mores over the campfire and hanging out with the other mosquito-bitten feral children of the campground.
My father would go birdwatching at Point Petre and my mother would offer flora- and fauna-related facts everywhere we went.
My favourite photo of Kate and I was taken when we were ten and twelve, standing on top of one of the dunes in our cut-off shorts, tanned arms stacked at the wrists with friendship bracelets, flushed from doing dozens of cartwheels and dance routines, unaware of the ensuing winter that was to disrupt our carefree lives.
I hadn’t been back since and didn’t remember much about the area beyond the dunes and the magnificent powdery beaches. But
Kate had returned several times as a young adult with her friends, and had picked PEC as a wedding destination for her and
wife-to-be, Sarah, because of the memories. Sarah had wanted to get married in Cuba, but because Kate always put others first,